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Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America by [Anthony Vaver]

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Anthony Vaver

Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America Kindle Edition

by Anthony Vaver (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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In 1723, James Bell grabbed a book from a London bookstall and started to run, but he was chased by several witnesses and was discovered hiding in a dog kennel. As punishment for his crime, Bell was loaded on a ship and sent to colonial America, where he was sold at auction as an indentured servant for a seven-year term.

Most people know that England shipped thousands of convicts to Australia, but few are aware that colonial America was the original destination for Britain's unwanted criminals. In the 18th century, thousands of British convicts like Bell were separated from their families, chained together in the hold of a ship, and carried off to America. What happened to these convicts once they arrived? Did they eventually prosper in an environment of unlimited opportunity, or were they ostracized by other colonists and doomed to live in poverty?

Anthony Vaver tells the stories of the petty thieves and professional criminals who were subjected to this unique punishment, and in bringing to life this forgotten chapter in American history, he challenges the way we think about immigration to early America.

The book includes an appendix with tips on researching individual convicts who were transported to America.

Length: 358 pages	Word Wise: Enabled	Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Page Flip: Enabled	Language: English

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Product description

About the Author

Anthony Vaver is the author and publisher of EarlyAmericanCrime.com, a website that explores crime, criminals, and punishments from America's past. He has a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and an M.L.S. from Rutgers University. He is currently working on a new book about early American criminals. He has never spent a night in jail, but he was once falsely accused of shoplifting. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN : B0059UK5E2
Publisher : Pickpocket Publishing (30 June 2011)
Language : English
File size : 1255 KB
Simultaneous device usage : Unlimited
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Not Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 358 pages

Best Sellers Rank: 305,302 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 43 in United States Colonial Period History
- 77 in History of the U.S. Colonial Period
- 1,035 in History of England (Kindle Store)

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59 ratings

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2 star		3%
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Malcolm

Good Introduction to the story of Transportation of Convicts to America.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 September 2014

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The story of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia is
probably best documented by Robert Hughes in his hefty volume,
The Fatal Shore, published in 1986.
Dr. Anthony Vaver in this book, Bound With An iron Chain has
tried to create a similar work albeit about Transportation of
Convicts to the American Colonies. Whilst not a complete history
of how the British dealt with their overflowing prisons of the 18th
century, it does serve as an excellent introduction to the often
unknown story of transportation to America, prior to the birth of
the USA. The author lists 50,000 souls transported, but others
found themselves bound for America too for whom records are scant.

There are chapters on England's Criminal Underworld, The Business
of Transportation, Convict Voyages, and Plantation Life; all backed
up with primary and secondary sources from the time, making the
book quite an eye opener for those with little if any knowledge of
the subject.
A good read for history buffs of all ages.
Published in 2011, 336 pages.
With full notes and bibliography.

3 people found this helpful

Diana Falkiner

This book was recommended to me as very useful research about transportation to ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 March 2016

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This book was recommended to me as very useful research about transportation to America, something I suspect is little known. Transportation to Australia is what comes to mind. It is very readable, an excellent resource, and came on time and in very good condition.

MS M K JONES

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 May 2017

Verified Purchase

Excellent, well written.

J. Gordon

Tossing my rose-colored glasses was never so much fun

Reviewed in the United States on 29 January 2019

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I had no idea English convicts were a big part of settling English colonial America. Nor did I know England's shipping of convicts to Australia only started after the American revolution because American colonists could finally reject convict transportation ships from England.

Here are some my favorite quotes from the Bound with an Iron Chain:

“In 1739, Governor William Gooch of Virginia complained to the British government that ‘The great number of Convicts yearly Imported here, and the impossibility of ever reclaiming them from their vicious habits have occasioned a vast Change to the Country.’“

“When Samuel Johnson famously quipped in 1769 that the American colonists ‘are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for any thing we allow them short of hanging,’ such a sentiment would not have sat well with Americans. After all, the British government was responsible for populating America with its unwanted convicted felons against the wishes of many colonists.”

“Eventually, convict labor became so popular that it essentially replaced indentured servitude, so when convict transportation came to an end at the start of the American Revolution, slavery became the only source of cheap labor available to plantation owners. With white laborers out of the picture, slavery kept the plantation system running, but it also ran counter to the ideals of equality that initially fueled the Revolution. As a result, an ideology of racial inferiority not only began to develop, but became necessary for justifying the continued existence of slavery. Back in Great Britain, as the jails and prisons began to fill up in the absence of a place to send its criminals, Parliament was forced into implementing extreme alternatives by first housing convicts on prison hulks [ships] and then shipping them halfway around the world to Australia.”

“Whereas before the war [1776] free immigrants arriving in America were by far the minority, after the war they became the majority. Nearly two-thirds of all immigrants who came to America after the Revolution were free, compared to only about a quarter before this time. Slaves and indentured servants continued to make up the difference until importing African slaves was finally banned in 1808.”

The book's sources include websites for searching the court records of Old Bailey, the infamous London court, plus other databases of early settlers to English colonial America.

2 people found this helpful

Bhingi

INFERIOR COVER, BINDING AND PAGES

Reviewed in the United States on 26 July 2018

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I buy a lot of books from amazon. However, this one right out of the wrapping, began to curl up like cheap cardboard.
Both back and front covers have to be held down while reading. The cover of this book is garbage. Even the pages are warping.
A stamp on the last page says
“MADE IN USA.
MIDDLETOWN, DE
23 JULY 2018”
Has this book been put together in someone’s basement?
This may be a good book but I’ll never know. The quality of the materials is so bad I’ll either donate it to the library where maybe they can recover it, or, I can rip off the covers and at least read the wavy pages as fast as I can before they wrinkle into themselves.
BUYER BEWARE. From now on, I will definitely stay away from buying amazon books.

2 people found this helpful

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